The reality cooking competition pits ordinary home cooks in a series of individual and team contests. The show launched in the United Kingdom now runs in 40 countries. It’s crazy popular almost everywhere.

The Canadian version is being produced by Proper Television, the company that produced Canada’s Worst Driver and Storage Wars Canada, among other shows.

The Canadian Masterchef judges were announced Thursday and production has since begun on the program.

The judges are Michael Bonacini, Claudio Aprile and Alvin Leung, three successful restauranteurs, all with connections to the Toronto area.

All three judges have prior television experience, too, though all three are impressed with the size and scale of Masterchef Canada.

“I’ve never seen anything quite so vast as the Masterchef studio,” said Aprile. Aprile is the owner and creative mind behind the Orderfire restaurant group, which includes the acclaimed Origin restaurants in Toronto. Aprile has some television experience, but nothing on this scale.

The judges seemed excited about the upcoming season. Toronto-raised, Michelin-starred chef Leung said said that the diversity of the contestants and the type of food they bring is reflective of the diversity of Canada. Leung, known by the moniker “demon chef,” is known for the style of cooking he calls X-treme Chinese. He has restaurants and has appeared on television in London, England, and in Hong Kong. He said they’ve seen Asian food and Italian food and Portuguese food and foods from across Canada.

The judges seem to get along quite well, joking and riffing on each other’s comments. “We share the fraternity of being a chef,” Leung said.

Leung and Aprile will lean on Bonacini’s experience, though. They agreed that the older Bonacini has more maturity and is better at giving perspective about the big picture. “Someone like me is a little bit more emotional” and would be more likely to send someone home over a small mistake, Leung said.

Part of the appeal of the American series of Masterchef is arguably the personalities of the judges. That version features personalities like Gordon Ramsay, famous for his expletive-fueled kitchen rants, Joe Bastianich, known on the show for his cold stare, and Graham Elliot, the lovable, more easy-going chef.

The Canadian judges say they have high standards, but wouldn’t describe themselves as mean judges.

“I don’t think the word mean is accurate,” said Aprile. “We all have our own style, we are all very demanding. You don’t get to be called ‘demonchef’…you don’t get to change the landscape of a city as Michael Bonacini has done, if you don’t have extremely high standards.”

Leung says the eventual winner will have to “wow” the judges in some way. “the winner has to be very, very, very talented.”

The judges, of course, will be there to help guide the home cooks along the way, but some may fall casualty to small mistakes.

“We have to get into their heads,” Leung said. “Nurture, but we do neuter a few on the way there.”

The judges did open up and give some advice for the type of food they enjoy.

Bonacini offered this advice: “Not everyone is going to make the grade, absolutely not,” he said. “So, it could be as simple as something that is overcooked, under-seasoned, badly presented, wrong strategy, badly thought through. Sometimes contestants try to cook something they have never tried before because they are trying to impress. Stick with things you do well, and do it extremely well.”